Google to Launch Siri Rival Soon?

[MacRumors]

Apple's artificial intelligence agent Siri was one of the key new features in the iPhone 4S. The impressive system has generated a lot of publicity and has put voice recognition technologies back into the forefront. Many companies are expected to integrate more voice enabled applications in the coming year.

Google's Android has long had voice dictation and command capabilities, but the company seems to be stepping up their efforts in the coming months. AndroidandMe reports on a secret project codenamed Majel which is meant to be an evolution of Google's Voice Actions with the addition of natural language processing. This natural language processing is what gives Siri an edge over other simple voice recognition systems.

In a Slashgear interview with Matias Duarte, Google's Director of Android OS User Experience, they describe their approach which won't try to mimic Siri's attitude:

The metaphor I like to take is - if it's Star Wars, you have these robot personalities like C-3PO who runs around and he tries to do stuff for you, messes up and makes jokes, he's kind of a comic relief guy. Our approach is more like Star Trek, right, starship Enterprise; every piece of computing surface, everything is voice-aware. It's not that there's a personality, it doesn't have a name, it's just "Computer." And you can talk to it and you can touch it, you can interact with it at the same time as you talk with it. It's just another way to interface with the computer.

The codename "Majel" comes from Majel Barrett-Roddenberry who voiced the Federation Computer from Star Trek.

Article Link: Google to Launch Siri Rival Soon?

 

[TimUSCA]

And every Android fan who said Siri was just a gimmick will think this is the greatest thing in the world.

 

[DaGreat01]

Of course....

 

[eric/]

I take issue with this being called artificial intelligence.

 

[rjohnstone]

And every Android fan who said Siri was just a gimmick will think this is the greatest thing in the world.

I still think it's a gimmick regardless of what platform it's on.
But that's just my opinion.

 

[nikhsub1]

Of course....

Fixed it for you.

 

[ThunderSkunk]

Who says android just seems like a cheap iOS copy?

Pushing the forefront of innovation, they are.

 

[ArtOfWarfare]

This might actually be legit useful... might.

Probably not.

I'd like it if Siri could understand moderately complicated commands like,

"Add to my calendar: calculus II final at 10:30 on the 13th in shillman room 153."

It ends up adding calculus II final at 1:53 on the 13th with no room at all... between having to fix the time and room, I may as well have just tapped it all out.

 

[Northgrove]

So they're implying that Siri is a "comic relief guy"? Uh. In that case, "she" has a terrible sense of humor when simply providing the nearest restaurants or helping me solve an equation.

Yes, there are some "humorous" responses, but only to non-answerable queries, and only added as easter eggs. It's not the intention of the actual service.

Trying to differentiate themselves like this and failing, indicates that it'll be very similar to Siri indeed, and it's probably no coincidence that it's about to be released so soon after it either.

 

[Ryth]

Me too, me too...

Their 'Computer' will never make it out of beta...

Star Wars > Star Trek

 

[PlipPlop]

And every Android fan who said Siri was just a gimmick will think this is the greatest thing in the world.

Just like every ios fan who said notifications,multi-tasking and mms were a gimmick. Swings and roundabouts.

 

[aeaglex07]

This might actually be legit useful... might.

Probably not.

I'd like it if Siri could understand moderately complicated commands like,

"Add to my calendar: calculus II final at 10:30 on the 13th in shillman room 153."

It ends up adding calculus II final at 1:53 on the 13th with no room at all... between having to fix the time and room, I may as well have just tapped it all out.

or even if Siri could simply tweet or other basic commands

 

[dethmaShine]

Who says android just seems like a cheap iOS copy?

Pushing the forefront of innovation, they are.

There sure is some innovation in mobile malware and stuff.
Google does great things in the web space. Android is really nothing innovating in my opinion.

Now I'll wait for Android fanboys to bitch about my opinions and understanding.

@topic: No one wants to talk to a phone; unless we copy it and do it for our fanboys!

 

[fletch33]

And every Android fan who said Siri was just a gimmick will think this is the greatest thing in the world.

i find it interesting that Android has something Siri like for years and Apple replicates it and adds a few upgrades and it is now a miraculous invention LOL

like the pull down task bar Android has had since 1.0

to each his own. i own an iPhone 2,3G,3Gs, and 4 and many Androids and they both have their good and bad sides.

Apple didnt invent the smartphone and neither did Android but they are both great devices today.

i dont care which one i am using they can both keep Siri. i dont like my phone talking back to me

 

[St. Germain]

I don't see how that would be an improvement from a UI standpoint over Siri. It's simply a different way of accomplishing the same thing.

The question remains whether it will be as intelligent as Siri is at interpreting the language the user gives it. Siri has issues, but for me, 95% of the time it understands what I'm trying to say. I don't think that's as easy to accomplish as many people might think.

To be honest, Siri has trained ME much more than I've trained it. I know that there are probably a half dozen ways to ask it what the weather is. Once I know just one method of asking works, I tend to just use that same one over and over, not caring that there are other ways of getting that same answer.

 

[dethmaShine]

i find it interesting that Android has something Siri like for years and Apple replicates it and adds a few upgrades and it is now a miraculous invention LOL

like the pull down task bar Android has had since 1.0

to each his own. i own an iPhone 2,3G,3Gs, and 4 and many Androids and they both have their good and bad sides.

Apple didnt invent the smartphone and neither did Android but they are both great devices today.

i dont care which one i am using they can both keep Siri. i dont like my phone talking back to me

People like you will never understand the difference b/w Voice Recognition and Machine Learning.

Go on ravelling.

 

[FSMBP]

I still think it's a gimmick regardless of what platform it's on.
But that's just my opinion.

I believe it's such a gimmick too. I mean, when I'm doing yardwork & I receive a text, it's so gimmicky to ask Siri to read me my text as opposed to reaching in my pocket with my dirty hands & possibly damage my iPhone. (You can activate Siri with the Apple supplied headphones. When I was doing yardwork, I never had to touch my iPhone.)

/sarcasm

It does have gimmicky aspects but at the end of the day, it's a powerful feature.

 

[rdowns]

“I don’t believe that your phone should be an assistant,” he said. “Your phone is a tool for communicating. You shouldn’t be communicating with the phone; you should be communicating with somebody on the other side of the phone.” - Andy Rubin

 

[Amazing Iceman]

Ready for another War

And here we go, another war starts...

Going to BASIC 1.0:

10 REM The Majel vs Siri wall
20 LET Majel = Siri + 1
30 LET Siri = Siri + 10
40 GOTO 20

Now in C:

main()
{
majel = 0;
siri = 10;
While (!NULL)
{
majel =siri+1;
siri=siri+10;
}
}


This story will never end!!!

----------

“I don’t believe that your phone should be an assistant,” he said. “Your phone is a tool for communicating. You shouldn’t be communicating with the phone; you should be communicating with somebody on the other side of the phone.” - Andy Rubin

Very true, just that we now have SmartPhones, and SmartPhones should be able to assist.
Andy Rubin should stick to an old Motorola flip phone and never dial 411 to avoid being assisted.

 

[tempusfugit]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 5_0_1 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/534.46 (KHTML, like Gecko) Mobile/9A405)

Of course google is coming out with personal assistant software, apple did.

In their defense they've become experts at playing catch up.

 

[Wickedgardengtp]

Seems like these companies just wait in the shadows for Apple to make something popular, then make cheaper/plastic builds of the same thing and then charge the same price for it. "Redmond, start your photocopiers"

 

[nagromme]

"everything is voice-aware”

We’ll see how true, how useful, and how soon that really turns out to be from Google!

If “everything” means the keyboard (dictation) then Google had that ages ago and now so does iOS. But that’s only useful in certain rare cases. Siri goes far beyond that. Can Google copy it quickly and effectively (sans the human “attitude”)? Or will be a halfway attempt that only includes Google’s own services—good enough for a bullet point in marketing hype? If it comes out any time soon, I fear the latter.

Trivia note: the word “android” does not mean robot. It means a robot in the form of a human; so C-3PO is properly a droid, while R2-D2 is not. For disembodies assistants, I’d say Siri is more android than the Enterprise. The More You Know!

 

[notjustjay]

Uh oh, did he really invoke Star Wars vs Star Trek? Hunker down folks, this is going to get violent...

But seriously, Google might have a real opportunity here if their app rivals Siri and they can provide a client app for the iPhone 4. That would short-circuit Apple's shrewd "You want Siri? Better upgrade to a 4S!" strategy and might even cause Apple to suddenly realize that, you know, maybe Siri can run on an iPhone 4 after all.

Gimmick or not, I really want to be able to play with Siri, but that's not going to happen with my iPhone 4. Millions of people in my shoes. Google has a window here.

Now if only the voice could actually sound like Majel...

 

[deputy_doofy]

Seems like these companies just wait in the shadows for Apple to make something popular, then make cheaper/plastic builds of the same thing and then charge the same price for it. "Redmond, start your photocopiers"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SHoukZpMhDE

28 seconds in. Windows' interpretation of English is far more amusing...

 

[Amazing Iceman]

“I don’t believe that your phone should be an assistant,” “Your phone is a tool for communicating. You shouldn’t be communicating with the phone; you should be communicating with somebody on the other side of the phone.” - 10/19/11 Andy Rubin, Android chief and SVP of Mobile at Google

http://allthingsd.com/20111019/android-chief-says-your-phone-should-not-be-your-assistant/

How shameful! If he would have said this 10 years ago, I would understand...
But this happened less than two months ago...
Now he has to swallow his own words, the ones he basically farted with envy through his mouth.
This clearly shows that Google didn't have a clue about implementing an assistant like Siri until they saw Siri's success, and now they want to copy.